With the proliferation of devices that are capable of communicating with other devices and the increased number of communication locations and options, the opportunities for interacting with a particular individual have increased considerably. However, identifying the best method of communication with the individual, as well as determining the availability of that person for communication, has become correspondingly more difficult.
In particular, communications over the Internet are routed between personal computers, servers, gateways etc. and not between users. Users and their peripheral devices are positioned “behind” their devices, and thus their “presence” is invisible to the Internet and to other users that might want to communicate with them.
Further, the large number of options for communicating with a user (e.g. instant messaging, voice over IP, text messaging, email, POTS, cellular communication, video conferencing etc.) and the large number of devices that can potentially support communication (smart phones, laptops, networked media devices, headsets, video conferencing facilities etc.) both complicate the question of how and where to communicate with a particular user.
It would be desirable to provide a method of identifying “where” in this large and diverse communications infrastructure users are and how best to communicate with them.